Small Changes; BIG RETURNS

Business first: let me introduce you to Adam.

(click the pic)

I have been looking for a way to embed Teacher's Domain videos into Earth Science course materials and they have actually offered to write the embed code for me!!!!! It might actually work. I’ll be trying this over the holidays. I think these guys may be from my global neighbourhood because there's a reference to Vancouver Island. I'm wondering if one could integrate Glogster posters with Adam's pop-up functions? It might make a nice mash-up. (Is that today's euphemism for 'marriage'?)

(click the pic)

If you have Freepath installed, there's been an update to some of the features. You can click the picture below for 4 short information videos or sign into myFreepath import the playlist entitled Freepath December Update which is on the main page. These links can also be found in my profile at the right.

What I really like is that Dave is working on ways to mash different free applications together with Freepath which will make me less dependent on online streaming. That's a real problem at our school where we suffer from strangulation by limited bandwidth. I need resources I can store on thumbdrives so I can avoid the internet altogether when the computers are sluggish and non-responsive. (Hmmmm . . . that sounds like many of our students especially after a weekend or a holiday . . . )

What I have to do this weekend:

(1)  finish a video Christmas Card of the students to be shown at the school's annual Christmas Dinner on Monday night

(2) get enough of my new "fossils no more -- surrey's 23 things" blog finished so that I can issue an invitation to Surrey staff to work on the program with me starting in January

(3) write proposals for 2 different conferences: Learn BC which is for the e-learning world and our own STA convention day

(4) figure out who might want my services enough o give me a contract!!! I want to buy some new equipment -- a flip camera, a tablet, and possible a new computer -- and would love to be able to write them off against income!!!

What I'd like to be doing this weekend:

(1) buying a new flip cam -- but that will have to wait until Boxing Day just in case Best Buy puts them on sale

(2) working on a Voicethread for Christmas

(3) taking Thelma, the wonder dog, for a walk at the dike at Boundary Bay to watch the sandpipers dip and flash as they swoop by and to see if the snowy owls are back

(4) watcing the Geminid meteor shower

I was supposed to be snowbound this weekend which would have made the first list much easier to 'plough' through. Instead it has cleared and I have been shooting pictures this morning from my ice-coated deck.  A full moon is setting into the trees in the northwest. Due north across about 30km across the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley are the pink, dawn-lit Coast Mountains fully laden with snow after yesterday's high elevation dump (I had rain!). My computer faces southeast where the sun has just cleared the cloud tops and is hitting me full in the eyes as I work.

In the spirit of Canadian Christmas, I offer 4 links:
(a) a haunting First Nations version of Canada's Huron Carol written by Jean Brébeuf a Jesuit priest who worked with various tribes in Canada in the 1600's; (b) a page written about the song and the priest; (c) an account of Brébeuf's time in Canada which reads just like the 'history of heroism' I was taught as a kid in Winnipeg, Manitoba (late 1950' & early 1960's). Written on 'History's Homepage' by an organization called AmericanHeritage.com, this is a terribly skewed version of events, but it offers enough geographical references than one can follow the progress of the priest's voyage from France all the way to where the Huron settlement would have been on what we now call Georgian Bay close to Point A on (d) this map.

CANADIAN CHRISTMAS GALLERY

(1 & 2)  Illustrations of the Huron Carol

(3,4,5) Lake Huron in winter -- not far from the location of the native settlement Brébeuf visited

(6,7,8) South Coast Christmas images: *Raven eating the Sun (our school's spirit image is the raven);  *Blue heron carrying the sun across the sky (see how low in the sky the sun is, and herons are a common sight here in the winter);  *Santa riding Rudolf over a mountain that reminds me of the glacier covered peak of Mount Baker

ONE WEEK TO GO!!!!

[UPDATE: I had to repost this blog entry because the first one had too many non-working parts. Thanks to the patience of Sachin and Gary, the 2 fellows behind the scenes at Posterous, I have finally discovered that I was making a very simple process complicated and broken. In the meantime the clouds and snow and gusty cold winds have come to my area so there will be no meteor shower viewing for me.]

Filed under  //   Adam   Brebeuf   Christmas   Freepath   Geminids   Huron Carol   meteor shower   myFreepath  

Some questions are coming up about how to download materials from the bigreturns group collection of educational resources in myFreepath so I thought I'd write up some instructions to help clarify matters.  In Freepath, foldersof resources are known as 'playlists' and the individual frames in any playlist are called 'cues'.

First you have to register with Freepath and download the program from the website. If you're using XP, you'll need to also install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 or higher. There is a link on the FP site. If you're a Mac person, you'll have to work on the Windows side to use Freepath and access these files.

Once you have done that and have this Freepath 2.0 Beta icon on your desktop (the sea anemone is part of my new desktop background!),

you will have to register with myFreepath. Please try to use an easily identifiable screen name. At last count there were several Patricia's, Julie's, Bob's, and John's in the members list. Take a moment to put a little information into your profile --eg. city and country, what you teach and which grades, what you might be using Freepath for. It will help me know who has joined the group and what your particular interests are.

You can now join the the bigreturns group in myFreepath.

There you will find 5 playlists: 2 with Ocean Resources from NOAA loaded by Lou at FP, and 3 provided by my workshop partner, Debra, and me.

Click this box 

  beside the playlsit that most interests you. They don't have online viewing yet, so you will have to download the file. A download notice of some sort will appear

When prompted to either 'Open' or 'Save' the playlist, select OPEN. When the download has finished, the playlist title should appear in your Library list after you open FP. When you close FP, the all the playlists in the Library are maintained. If you want to save a copy of any individual playlist to an external hard drive or thumbdrive, use the Export function in the File menu.

If you happened to use 'Save' instead of 'Open' at the beginning of this process, a copy of the individual playlist will come up on your desktop. If you click that, it will open FP and should add the list to your Library.

To view a playlist, single click on the one you want in the Library list and the cues will fill with the files that have been stored there. The cues take up the middle window, and there is a small prep screen on the far right. Double click on any of the cues and that screen will fill. If you want to view all the cues in order, use the arrows at the top of the prep screen.

If you click a PowerPoint an additional panel comes up to show you all the slides in that presentation. (Your screen may go to gray for a moment.) Use the arrows at the top of that panel to click your way through the slides. 

There are 3 ways to view FP playlists:

(1) prep screen (shown above) which is where you are taken automatically

(2) full screen with control arrows and screen options at the bottom

(3) dual display if you have your projector hooked up or have 2 monitors on your computer like I do.

If you have any technical issues or questions, I'll be happy to try to help. You can reach me through the email link shown in my blog, or by leaving messages for me at myFreepath.  However, your best bet might be to contact Lou and Dave, the FP people directly. Both are members of the bigreturns group so you can send them messages by clicking their names in the group list. This will bring up their profile page and you can use the 'Send Message' link.

Please tell them "Sue sent you" and where you saw our presentation or heard about Freepath (which will help me a bit). They are very good at getting back to people quickly, where it might take me a few days to respond. I work a 1.25 contract each week, so my school days are packed, and it can take me a while to get to myFreepath business.

Enjoy the files we've posted, and try one of your own. My suggestion is to keep your playlists on the short side (1 or 2 lessons rather than a whole unit) if you're going to upload to my FP. Bulky playlists can take a while to upload.

You get 100MB of your own space free, but if you are willing to share with others in the bigreturns group, we have loads more. You don't have to save online, but it's a nice way to share with colleagues and students who have Freepath on their computers.

I look forward to seeing new members in the bigreturns group. My hope is that it will turn into a learning community of people interested in incorporating new tools and resources into old lessons as a way to give them a makeover and then will share their ideas and experiences with this group.

QUESTION:  I want to upload the Peace video I made of the students' Powerpoint for Peace projects to YouTube, but I'm afraid that when I compress it, the quality will suffer. Their images already took a hit when I had to convert twice so I could get a format that Adobe Premier Elements would 'read'. Any suggestions? Please help!

 

Filed under  //   big returns   bigreturns group   Freepath   myFreepath   playlists   teaching resources  

 

My word I can be long winded!  In preparation for the Horizons Conference on Friday, I thought it would be a good idea to get the rest of our Freepath interview posted. Congratulations to any of you who read it all the way through! I guess the value for me has been in the writing and crystallizing of my own thoughts as I have been preparing for these 2 conferences and sending in proposals for others.  

Read on, MacDuff!  I hope some of it has been helpful. If you nave a moment, leave me a comment below. I'd love to hear back from some of you.

FINAL FREEPATH INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: 

In your session, you discuss the idea of ‘blended learning’; what does this teaching model look like?

 

At its simplest, blended learning is a custom approach that mixes a variety of content delivery and student response options to get the best fit for the student (in our case) or for the class.  We know that particularly with learning packages, it’s difficult to get the students off the bottom couple of steps of Bloom’s cognitive model (above) . Projects like making posters may offer a more creative, less ‘word bound’ way for students to respond -- but really -- how many posters can one student make in their high school careers? How many will they ever do in their work or family life (except when helping their own kids with their homework)? And do posters really reach up the lowest steps of the above model and engage learners in application, analysis, synthesis, or evaluations -- or are they just more basic knowledge presented in a visual way?

Here's what our new teaching model looks like:

I. Trigger Activity : Each new section or unit begins with an activity that serves 2 functions: (1) to generate student interest; & (2) to get the student and teacher to connect so the teacher can assess ability, prior knowledge, and interest levels of the student.

In my new Earth Science program this will be a mind map introducing the key topics of the unit but that will also be loaded with interesting links that will connect back to old learning, stimulate conversation about current events, amuse, surprise, or pique curiosity.

II. Content Acquistion :  This is where we can save time. Typically with the current learning packages, our students spend so much time acquiring the information in a course we don’t push them to do much higher order thinking or truly creative projects.  By setting out the learning objectives in a simple form right at the beginning, and using Freepath to package the learning materials, students will be able to accelerate their progress through this material, work non-sequentially if they wish, and have some measure of control over how much time they spend acquiring the required content and skills.

III.  PEL -- Project Enhanced Learning:   (I think I may have coined a new term!) Students will use a new web-based tool or resource together with what they have learned to solve a problem, answer a bigger question, make a connection, do the review, create a presentation, or fulfill the learning objectives. This requirement can be built into the body of the unit or done after the basic content has been covered.  It is possible that a well- constructed project may become the vehicle for the content acquisition -- that’s the neat thing about finding these tools.

 
How do you see social media impacting students in the 21st century? How does it impact teachers and where do you see the intersection?

Marshall McLuhan created the slogan "Reach out and touch someone" for the Bell system in 1979.   I think he’d be delighted by the way technology has so shaped our lives in the nearly 30 years since his death.

Clearly many students are wrapped up in a web of connections -- whether it’s as simple as passing notes by texting each other or participating in Facebook or Second Life. Contrary to school rules, their phones are always on. We can either fight this or, in the parlance of the 60’s and 70’s, co-opt it. We may not be able to ‘out-tech’ our kids but we can certainly outsmart them and harness their desire to be connected and use it for our own purposes.

Students with their phones out on their desks, accessing the internet and completing tasks using these as a primary learning tool can’t be texting each other under the table.  Students who are using the wealth of the internet as their primary learning resource and who are more engaged in their learning don’t have time in class to manage their Facebook files and keep up with their Tweeting friends.

Regarding how social networking impacts teachers:  I’m of the “Be wary because Big Brother is watching” generation, and I still have a lot of distrust for living so publically, but I will say that finding how willing people “out there” are to make time to help each other completely took me by surprise.

I can find a bit of software, get into trouble trying to make it work, e-mail out a request for help and then get back a response -- I find that totally amazing.  I am so used to waiting for hours on the phone or weeks for a serviceperson to come to the house or even in line at the bank or at the market -- this online world of people who want to connect, to help, to dialogue, and to learn form each other is a delight.

However, trying to fit the hours it can consume into an already crowded day and still find time for relaxation, my husband, and sleep is a challenge.  Perhaps the question on balancing time should have been asked in this context. It’s what I am truly grappling with right now.

 

 
Your presentation at the upcoming CUEBC Conference is entitled Small Changes; Big Returns: integrating Web-based Tools and Resources. Can you give us an idea of what we'll be seeing?

Debra and I have put a lot of thought into how education at the White Rock Learning Center can be taken from ‘pen and paper’ to more engaging delivery and improved student achievement.

The two of us collectively have been teaching for more than 50 years, and although we know that education should be a dynamic process, it is very easy for seasoned teachers to become complacent about the design and delivery of new educational material. Years of marking, large numbers of students in classes, and textbook upgrading can often squelch the teacher’s passion for the profession.  

With our students’ lack of self-directedness and our own need for professional renewal converging, Debra and I decided to start making some “small changes” in our classroom delivery --  i.e. incorporate a Powerpoint activity, try an essay template set up like a fillable form, add links to video files and animations, and use the Google research engine to find information in all content areas.

The small changes had BIG RETURNS.  A young man who had been struggling on and off to complete Geography 12 started attending regularly because the Powerpoint Jeopardy task we had set him was both manageable and intriguing.  Students no longer complained about not knowing what Deb wanted when reading the essay assignments. The structure and her voice were there on the page.  Some life was breathed into the deadly Earth Science course  when the students could see animations of processes and get video instruction.

Then, with the discovery of Freepath it all came together.  It became the delivery tool that would enable us incorporate these changes into a well designed lesson plans and package the new lessons up for the students.

Freepath is meets the criteria for our ‘tools of choice’ because it’s so easy to use and the company support is so good. With simple drag and drop moves, lessons can be created that allow students to work independently in a medium they are used to while at the same time allowing Debra and me to help those students who require direct instruction. The students benefit because they are involved more effectively in their own learning process, and Debra and I benefit because our passion has once again ignited.

“Small Changes; BIG RETURNS” is the core of our philosophy -- we invest in making small changes to our work to get BIG RETURNS with the students

 

Filed under  //   blended learning   Bloom   cartoon   Connect the Dots soup   CUEBC   enhance learning   Freepath   Horizons   Marshall McLuhan   model ot learning   recipe   social learning   tools   using technology   Web 2.0  

The point of all this is that it took me right up to the last few minutes before the presentation at San Jose to get it all just right -- so there was no more time for blog posts.

To those of you who came to see us there, we hope some part of our presentation resonated with you. We'd love you to give us some feedback.  Perhaps you'll email me with the answers to the following 4 questions and any comments or suggestions you'd like to add:

    (a) Which part of the presentation was the most interesting to you?

    (b) Which part held your interest the least?

    (c) Will you be trying Freeapth?

    (d) Which of our other tools might you try?

Also, if you'd like to receive this blog regularly, please send me your email address. I'm trying to find out from the team at Posterous how I can send you all an update notice.

To the 2 people from Toronto -- I'm so glad you found us!!! Did we say/show anything that particularly interested you? I'm thinking of setting up a network of Canadian educators who use Freepath. I know of at least one person in Alberta. Are you interested?

This is one of our students, Syd G-B, using Freepath to research photos for her PowerPoint for Peace project slide.

NEXT 2 FREEPATH QUESTIONS:

How do you balance the use of "leading edge" tools with the normal time requirements as teachers?

Simply put, the flexible structure of the learning environment in our alternate school allows Debra and me to have the luxury of being able to make the time needed to learn and implement “leading edge” tools.  Working with individualized programs relieves us of the need to live within strict timelines.  Our kids keep working on a subject until they finish.  For some students this can be accomplished in a few weeks; for others a few months.  The self-paced instruction gives us the time to breathe, to think, to collaborate, and to learn new and interesting technology in a non-frantic, non-stressful manner, and to launch centre-wide projects like Powerpoint for Peace and our Earthcast’08 presentation.

How does Freepath fit into your classroom?

Freepath happens to be the tool I found and Deb agrees that is capable of helping us address a number of challenges, such as: how to easily combine different kinds of resources in one lesson; how to provide instruction that provides for different learning styles, multiple intelligences, and varying abilities; how to work around the limited bandwidth in our school; and how to maximize student on-task time in our individualized setting. 

Here’s what I envision:

Students will load up their thumbdrives (we can’t yet depend on fast or consistent internet connection) and they will be able to work on our material 24/7.  Many of them are night owls working on their computers at home anyway -- we might as well capitalize on this.  They can do the assignments right on the Freepath screen or print and work by hand if they wish.  The files can be deleted and replaced when the work is completed.  Their most interesting work samples can be stored in student portfolios at myFreepath.

A unit built in Freepath can truly get us away from traditional learning centre content packages -- duotangs with fading photocopied text material and lists of questions or written assignments.  Once we have loaded a playlist with the relevant text pages, idea diagrams, Powerpoints, pod- or vod-casts, other multimedia materials, and response form templates, we can let the students loose.  

Units constructed this way enable us to more easily differentiate learning by customizing activities to meet the needs of the student, and they ‘free‘ the student to negotiate the ‘path’way to learning.

For a stronger student, we can leave the completion of work required to meet the objectives more open-ended.  Whereas a special sequence of activities can be selected and arranged by just shifting the cues (frames) for students who need more direction or who have trouble with reading or grasping concepts. The neat thing here is that we don’t have to rely on print and long videos. We can dole the concepts out in smaller chunks and the students can go back as many times as is needed to really get the answers. We’re trying to minimize the hours spent reading content material they really don’t understand and answering questions by trying to match words and copy the ‘right stuff’.

The material can be easily reshaped over time as we listen to the students’ feedback and add new resources and remove others.   A case in point -- my mum sent me an article about a recent discovery of the oldest rock in the world (4.28 billion years) in northern Quebec. All my old stuff has the oldest rock in the North West Territories (4.03 billion years).  Right now I have to amend the old package, recopy it and toss out the old ones. Once it’s all in Freepath I’ll be able to change a couple of cues and be totally up to date. I may even have a student do that as part of a learning activity -- to reinforce the notion that scientific knowledge is always growing.

 

Filed under  //   blended learning   California   Freepath   ILC 2008   San Jose  

I have set up 3 playlists for the bigreturns group (just my profile is available here as of tonight)  at myFreepath . When you download Freepath and sign up for myFP at the same time, ask to be invited to my group and you'll be able to see a comprehensive tools list (with homepages and student work if we've used them already); a sample unit in Social Studies 10 showing how leading edge tools can be integrated, and a general pot of other stuff I thought would be of interest to people at the conference.

QUESTION: What are your beliefs about of the integration of new tools into your work in the classroom?

In our Learning Centre all students work individually on a variety of subjects in a large classroom area. Debra and I share this large storefront-type open room with all the distractions of two different classes going on simultaneously.

When there are fewer than 10 kids in our groups, keeping the kids on task is fairly straight forward.  However, we both can have upwards of 17-20 on our lists. Debra tends to get a younger group -- mostly grade 10’s -- many of whom have been recently ejected by their mainstream schools because they are difficult to manage. I teach math and science -- the 2 subjects that students find the most difficult to work on without constant help.

When our kids can’t work independently, we turn to better-crafted instructional packages to keep them interested and engaged.  It’s a matter of day-to-day survival for us. Therefore, we believe that keeping the students engaged, on task, and working independently requires us to put enough actual instruction into the packages so that they can understand the concepts without continual teacher input. This way they’ll be interested in and capable of working on their own for longer periods.

“Why everything old is new again, but better” (borrowed from Caroline Gray; see references below) is the banner we’re working under. We have no time or interest really in throwing out everything we’ve always done and starting over -- not after the more than 30 years it took to get good at what we do!

What really interests us is that there are a lot of smart young people out there developing easy-to-use tools to make tech-challenged people like us look good.  With such tools we can get students to perform tasks on the computer that we’ve always had them do by hand -- draw idea diagrams, work out time lines, collect research, make posters, build bibliographies, work through lesson packages. These tools enable our kids to produce work they can be proud of and that they can share with the world.  Such tools eliminate a lot of the struggle they used to endure to get the job done.  They can concentrate on the message rather than on the construction.

We want students to unplug their headphones, logoff Facebook, and get out of MySpace for a while. As shown in the affective domain model diagram above, no learning can occur until students are (a) receiving us and (b) have a willingness to give us their attention. We want students to give more of their 'brainspace' to schoolwork -- not just the bit left unfilled by loud music and text messaging. However, the 2 pre-requisites for engagement in learning -- i.e. receiving and willingness to pay attention -- are seldom elicited by our just insisting that the students turn off their devices when they pass through our doors.

To take them where we want them to go, teachers have to start from where they are -- but not just in the academic sense.

Students learn more from teachers they know care enough to forge a connection. We need to be willing to make ourselves vulnerable by taking some steps into their technological world and then guide them confidently into our world from a place at their side.

You must have flash to see this embedded document.

Filed under  //   blended learning   Bloom   Caroline Gray   enhance learning   Freepath   ILC 2008   model of engagement   myFreepath   San Jose   tools   using technology  

Braving the weather makes us strong.  Talking about the weather gives us something in common.  When I lived in a different city from my family, my Dad used to call me long distance and we would chat about the weather.  When they're done, my students should know what makes the wind blow, what kind a front brings the kind of wind that is threatening to topple the over-heavy trees in my yard as I write,  and how the rain forms.  When their own kids ask "Why is the sky blue, Daddy?" if they can't recall the answer, they should be able to look it up with their kids and understand the explanation. If they catch from me a sense of how interesting the science of weather can be and look at the world with a little more understanding, I'll retire happy.

All my students work on individual learning packages, and even in this high pressure week, I didn't have the heart to hand out the 'copy-memorize-dump out on the test' stuff that makes up most of the learning packages that we use. Weather  I had to rewrite!  I finished it a few hours ago, and then let the deluge of emails flow out of the ether & onto my desktop.  It was kind of like watching the scene in Miracle on 34th Street when the bags of letters to Santa are dumped out on the judge's bench.  The most important items -- mostly education blogs and lists about tools and interesting initiatives -- have been sorted and filed. Family and friends have been replied to. The rest can wait.

In the meantime, the most interesting tools I came across today are listed below. Remember to click the pics.

GLOGSTER wants us to 'poster ourselves' -- a 'dumb' slogan but a great looking result.

 

Free video help for homework and test prep -- even for math -- but nothing on weather (boohoo!).  Some of these videos are a little young for my 15-17 year olds, but they're worth a look.

WEBINSIPIRATION  is a visual thinking tool that makes it easy to collaborate on and share documents by inviting others to contribute, post comments, and view changes.

For the budding composers in my class and new users can sign up free -- the drawback is that you have to subscribe ($$) to get a fully functioning version.

THE ART ZONE  -- interactive art that you can make online from the National Gallery of Art

I'm looking for a new way to communicate with my students -- especially when I have to be away from school or when I have new tools to share --  so I'm considering 2 possibilities:

 

    Grou.ps  -- where I can create a community site by choosing the modules I want -- it sounds a bit like Squidoo but with interactive capabilities.

 

   Offers me microblogging for education -- my students & I can share notes, links, and files to foster communication inside and outside of the classroom.

I want to thank shareski for his Interesting Quotes  series in Flickr.  I have to say I really don't get Twitter.  I can't imagine (a) having the time or (b) really caring enough to wonder what strangers are doing 24/7, but this poster and Angela Maiers' blogpost on the subject have me curious -- which is a big step.  Twitter's in my November 'to do' lineup.

Last spring when I was first looking for free, downloadable software that I could use to build interesting learning packages for the kids, I came across Freepath -- a multimedia packaging tool.  I can collect all the materials I use --  text files, PDF's, videos, sound files, and Powerpoints, and more -- and sequence them in a single playlist for a lesson or a presentation.  I managed to get my school district to allow my school to download Freepath to the our computer on a trial basis -- and now I'm in the process of working out how I can take the last step away from textbook-based learning into developing learning packages that will look something like this.  

By storing my playlist files online at myFreepath, I can make them available to the students who will be able to download them at home or bring their thumbdrives to school to be loaded.  I'll be able to invite other teachers to share my files and collaborate to improve them or build new ones.  

 

 

When I sign off here, I have to work on a list of questions sent by Dave of myFreepath.  The list reads a little like the final exams I took back when I was in 'teacher training' some 35 years ago. Many years ago a friend and co-department member at the time, Nancy Demwell, told me that she believed all teachers ought to be able to articulate the fundamental principles upon which their work was built. Few of us ever have to unless we're interviewing for a new job or want to move up the ladder into administration.

I think Nancy felt teachers fell into 2 groups: those whose work is infused with a well-articulated vision and those who fly by the seat of their pants.  The latter will certainly keep up with content requirements, familiarize themselves with new trends, and discipline as they saw fit at the time,  but their work lacks a greater coherence and meaning and has little lasting impact on the lives of their students.  She believed that answers to questions such as "Why are you a teacher?"  reveal a lot about whether the individual was a deeper thinker or "was good with people and wanted to good things for kids" -- a vague kind of response she thought was particularly flakey.  

So with Nancy on my mind, I am going to tackle Dave's questions. It's an interesting exercise especially given that I'm a year or 18 months at most away from retirement. I suspect with all this new passion for my work bubbling up again, my colleagues may be taking bets on whether I'll really going to leave or not.

Take a look at these and see what you come up with. Please send me your responses.

 QUESTIONS (courtesy Dave at myFreepath & edited a little by me):

(1) What is the core of your perception of the integration of new tools into the classroom? 

(2) How do you balance the need for "leading edge" tools with the normal time requirements of your program?

(3) In your blog, you discuss the idea of 'blended learning'; what does this teaching model look like?

 
(4) How do you see social media impacting students in the 21st century? How does it impact teachers and where do you see the intersection?

(5) How might Freepath fit into your classroom? 

Filed under  //   Angela Maiers   Art Zone   Edmodo   Freepath   Glogster   Grou.ps   ILC 2008   Interesting Quotes   Jam Studio   myFreepath   San Jose   shareski   Studio4Learning   weather   Webinspiration